‘We’ll rest here,’ he ordered suddenly. He looked at Skellen. ‘See to it, Sergeant.’
Burton moved to stand at his captain’s side as Skellen sent word down the line. The lieutenant kept his voice low. ‘What if they send men after us?’
Stryker pulled the buff-gloves from his fingers and scratched at the puckered skin that served as a macabre lid to his mutilated eye socket. ‘A force that size? They were to garrison Bovey Tracey. We’re of no concern.’ He took off his wide-brimmed hat, rapping it with his knuckles to send a cloud of dust into the breezeless air before tossing it on to the grass at the road’s verge. ‘Besides, if they send cavalry we will be caught. Would you march another hour and be tired when finally they’re at our backs?’
Burton shook his head. ‘I would rest now and fight them afresh.’
‘So we rest.’ Stryker unbuckled his sword, dropping it next to the hat, and sank to his haunches. ‘And hope the bastards don’t come.’
Burton removed his own hat and sat beside Stryker, running a hand across his forehead to shift thick tendrils of sweat-matted hair. ‘A good match, wouldn’t you say?’
Stryker followed Burton’s gaze to where Ensign Chase was attempting to prop the company colour against a broad tree trunk. ‘Match?’
‘The new coats, sir. Captain Fullwood has some experience in the dying trade, apparently. According to him, getting the right shade of red – or any colour for that matter – is the devil of a job.’
Stryker stared at Chase as the company’s most junior officer continued to struggle with the large standard. The regiment had been supplied with new coats after Cirencester had fallen to Prince Rupert earlier in the year. The Stroud Valley was a prolific centre of wool production, and many of the king’s regiments had taken the opportunity to replace their threadbare coats and breeches with the sudden availability of material.
‘They might have ended up in blue,’ Stryker replied eventually. ‘There was more blue than anything else.’
Burton sniffed his derision. ‘Well I for one am pleased Sir Edmund insisted upon red. Goes with the regimental colours, after all. Slightly darker hue than our flag, I grant you, but it’s not too far off.’ He glanced down at his own coat, a nondescript shade of brown, and fingered the sleeve of his limp right arm. ‘Perhaps I should have taken the opportunity to replace this old thing when I had the chance.’
Stryker shook his head. ‘The prince would not have been pleased.’ He might have been an infantry officer, but Stryker and a select group of comrades were often enlisted by the king’s nephew, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, for special – often covert – tasks.
Burton chuckled. ‘Aye, I suppose he would not wish us parading around in nice, bright red. Still, the fact remains,’ he went on, his attention back on the rank and file, ‘they look a far more imposing body now.’
Stryker did not much care for coats or colours, and he allowed his thoughts to drift elsewhere. To old battles and fallen friends, to the most recent horrors he had witnessed on the killing field of Hopton Heath, and to the bitter siege he had barely survived before it. And then, inevitably, to the person whose presence had drawn him to the ill-fated little city of Lichfield. A woman with long, golden hair and sapphire eyes. Who could be dainty as a flower one moment and hard as steel the next. A woman who beguiled and infuriated Stryker in equal measure.
‘Is she still in Rome?’ Burton’s voice stabbed through his reverie.
Stryker looked up sharply, and the lieutenant’s face paled, his eyes immediately studying the ground. ‘Christ, Andrew, but you’re becoming as impertinent as Skellen.’
‘Beg pardon, sir, I overstepped,’ Burton muttered sheepishly.
‘Yes, you bloody did,’ Stryker replied, though he could feel the anger already begin to seep away. He sighed heavily. ‘Aye, she is still in Rome.’ The image of Lisette Gaillard leapt back into his mind’s eye, and for a second he allowed himself to luxuriate in the memory of her voice, her touch, her scent. But even as those fine thoughts swirled, they were intertwined with sadness. She had left England back in March, shortly after the bloody fight outside Stafford, a fight that saw the last great act of a master fire-worker, the death of an earl, and the restoration of Stryker’s reputation. For Lisette was Queen Henrietta Maria’s agent. Messenger, spy, assassin. Ever at the monarch’s beck and call. And that meant she could never be truly Stryker’s. He didn’t know if he loved her or loathed her. ‘So far as I goddamn know,’ he added bitterly.
Burton opened his mouth to speak, but another glance from Stryker’s forbidding grey eye made him think twice. Instead he watched Stryker unlace his sleeveless buff-coat and fish out a folded piece of paper. The captain opened the greasy square carefully, staring down at the hand-drawn features adorning its surface.
‘Where now, sir?’ Burton said after a few moments.
Stryker squinted to discern the black lines of bridleways from the paper’s myriad creases. He indicated a particular point with a grubby finger. ‘We’re here. Outside Bovey Tracey.’
‘Never to return.’
Stryker thought of the large Parliamentarian force they had seen approach the town and felt a wave of relief that his company had been organized enough to take their leave in good time. ‘Aye. And here,’ he continued, tracing one of the meandering ink strokes westwards with his nail, ‘is the road we’ll follow.’
‘The Tavistock road.’ Burton glanced up. ‘Back to Launceston?’
‘Naturally. General Hopton will wish to know why we abandoned our post.’
‘Will it go bad for us, sir?’
Stryker could sense Burton’s concern and he looked up. ‘He sends a single company to guard a road, and the enemy appear with a whole bloody regiment.’
‘Not a great deal we could do, was there?’
‘I fear not.’ He leaned back on his elbows. ‘Justice will out, Andrew. Hopton’s no fool.’
Burton nodded. ‘So we must trudge back across the moor.’
Stryker read the bleakness in Burton’s expression. ‘You do not relish the task?’
‘Dartmoor is such a desolate place.’
‘You listen to Sergeant Heel too readily, Lieutenant.’ Stryker sat up and slapped Burton on the shoulder. ‘Tall tales of men vanishing in the mists and swallowed by bogs. The fact remains that we are here,’ he said, tapping the map, ‘in the south-east, and, as of this morning, so are the enemy. Further east we have Exeter—’
‘Rebel town.’
‘Indeed.’ The captain’s finger moved upwards across the page. ‘And to the north they hold Okehampton. In short, Launceston is the only safe town for us hereabouts. So we must head due west, back into Cornwall.’
‘Across Dartmoor,’ Burton said glumly.
‘Damn these boots!’ Sergeant Skellen’s coarse tone – honed in the taverns of Gosport – rang out nearby.
Stryker and Burton looked to where he sat a short distance along the road, long arms wrestling to pluck a ragged-looking bucket-top boot from his huge foot.
‘Thought you said they was the best ever crafted,’ one of the soldiers said.
‘Stitched by the fair hands of a dozen maids, you said, Sergeant,’ Lieutenant Burton chimed in.
Skellen let out a heavy breath through his nostrils. ‘Indeed an’ I did, sir.’ He struggled a while longer, amused smirks breaking out all around, and looked up when finally he had relieved his feet of the offending items. ‘Took ’em off a dead harq’busier after Kineton Fight. Comfy as a night in the Two Bears down in Southwick.’ He closed his small, dark eyes at the memory. ‘A buttock banquet before bed, and tits for pillows.’
The men laughed raucously, and Skellen offered an amber-toothed grin.
‘What’s the matter with ’em now then, Sergeant?’ a man asked.
‘The wenches at the Two Bears? Absolutely nothin’ I hope, lad. For I shall visit them again soon, God willin’!’
‘The boots, Sergeant,’ the man clarified.
�
�Kineton were months ago, Harry lad, and I’ve marched many a night and fought many a day since. Now the buggers are torn up like a pair o’ shot-through snapacks, and my feet are sufferin’.’
‘And ripe as old milk!’ Stryker added, sniffing the air, and was rewarded with more laughter.
‘Sir!’ The call reached Stryker from perhaps fifteen paces further up the road. ‘Horses, sir!’
Stryker scrambled quickly to his feet, spinning on his heel and fixing the nearest men with a look they had come to know well. Wordlessly he gestured that they should stand. Rapidly, and in deathly silence, the red-coated ranks took to their feet, buckled belts, emptied pipes, crammed on helmets, took up weapons and formed into their squads.
The man who had raised the alarm was now at his captain’s side, and Stryker looked down at him. He was an incongruous sight, equipped in full military regalia and dressed in the grey coat and breeches of the feared Scots Brigade, for the man’s head did not reach a great deal above Stryker’s waist. He was tiny, a dwarf whose clothing and weaponry made him appear for all the world like a child playing at soldiers. But it was a sight to which Stryker had grown accustomed in the weeks since Simeon Barkworth had joined his company. He had also grown used to trusting the little man’s judgement. ‘Certain?’ Stryker asked.
‘’Course I’m certain,’ the Scot responded tartly.
Stryker glowered. ‘You may not carry rank here, Simeon, but I’ll bloody break your nose if you address me like that again.’
Barkworth’s eyes were a luminous yellow colour, putting Stryker in mind of a cat, and they narrowed at the taller man’s threat. But he evidently thought better than to argue, and instead reined in his temper. ‘I apologize, Captain. Aye, I’m certain of what I heard, sir.’
‘Good enough.’
And then Stryker heard it too. The soft whicker of a horse, hidden somewhere within the phalanxes of ancient oak. Stryker saw Burton and Skellen staring at him intently, their faces questioning. ‘Hear that?’ he said, voice quiet now, senses alert.
Skellen frowned after a while, but even as he began to shake his head, a horse whinnied. ‘Christ!’ he hissed, hooded eyes widening in alarm. ‘It can’t be!’
Stryker thought for a moment, but shook his head. ‘They’re not from the town. They’d never have reached us this soon.’
The horse’s call carried to them again. Burton pointed to the right of the road, where nothing could be seen for forty or fifty paces through the dense woodland. ‘Over there.’
Stryker turned to Simeon Barkworth. ‘Take a look.’
Barkworth nodded once and immediately plunged into undergrowth. The company watched as the little man leapt branches and dodged trees, his movements agile but soundless, until his silhouette was swallowed by the gloom.
They waited in near silence for two or three minutes with only the birdsong for company. Stryker studied the sky. It was still warm, the prickling at his sweating armpits all the more irritating now that they were not on the move, but he noted how grey the thick clouds had become, and quietly ordered the men to protect their powder in case it rained.
When Barkworth eventually returned, his expression was one of excitement. ‘Land—falls—away—’ His voice, throttled to near destruction by a hangman’s noose more than a decade earlier, was never more than a rasp, but the sprint had rendered him breathless, and virtually impossible to understand.
Stryker held up his palms. ‘Hold, Simeon. Catch your breath.’
Barkworth nodded, took several deeper lungfuls of the muggy air, and looked into his commander’s keen eye. ‘The land falls away to a shallow bowl. A clearing in the forest. They’re there.’
‘They?’
‘A dozen, cavalry all.’
Stryker’s eye narrowed. ‘Ours or theirs?’
Barkworth’s face creased in an apologetic frown. ‘Can’t be certain, sir.’
‘Field sign?’ Lieutenant Burton asked.
Barkworth glanced at him. ‘Black feather, sir.’
‘A black feather?’ Skellen interjected. ‘Never heard o’ that one.’
Barkworth stared up at him. ‘And you’re the authority on the subject, you lanky bastard?’
‘I’d wager I’m an authority greater than you, you bloody puck-eyed dwarf.’
‘Enough!’ Stryker ordered. The mostly good-natured sniping between Barkworth and Skellen had become part of the company’s fabric since they had first encountered the Scot – working as the Earl of Chesterfield’s bodyguard at the time – at Lichfield the previous March, but now he required their undivided attention. ‘Simeon, you’re sure that was the only field sign? Skellen’s right, I’ve never seen one like that.’
Barkworth nodded. ‘That’s the sign, right enough, sir. Big thing, too. Pinned between the helmet tail-plates.’ He moved a hand across his skull from neck to forehead. ‘The plume curves right over, like this.’
Stryker looked at Burton. ‘Lieutenant?’
‘We assume they’re Cropheads until we’re certain.’
Stryker nodded. ‘Indeed we do.’
Barkworth stepped forward, his yellow eyes suddenly bright. ‘Set about them, sir?’
Stryker rubbed a hand across his stubble. ‘I’m inclined to let them be, Simeon. I do not wish to draw any undue attention to our small force.’
‘Aye, sir,’ Barkworth replied casually, ‘as you order.’
Stryker stared down at the little man, suspicious at the ease with which Barkworth’s notoriously flammable battle-lust had dissipated. ‘Simeon?’
Barkworth’s gnarled features cracked in a sharp-toothed grin. ‘You might like to take a peek at what they have with them, sir.’
Stryker, Burton, Skellen and Barkworth crouched low behind a close-cropped group of trunks and studied the strangers at the foot of the slope. The clearing was indeed the shape of a bowl, a circular patch of sunken, bare land in the forest’s depths with wide oaks lining its rim. At its far side was an opening in the trees where a narrow track ran away to the north, quickly swallowed by the darkness.
There were, as Barkworth had said, twelve cavalrymen. All but one was mounted, though there seemed no urgency about their movements. One leaned back to take a long draught from a leather-bound flask, another picked at his teeth with a thin dagger, and at least three were sucking lazily on clay pipes. None of the riders wore their helmets, but those Stryker could see, slung at the sides of saddles or propped under their owners’ arms, were adorned with the large black feather Barkworth had described.
Stryker’s attention turned to the object that had so excited Barkworth. It was a wagon. An inauspicious affair of half-rotten planks and rickety wheels, drawn by a pair of gaunt nags, and with a nervous-looking man in a brown farmer’s shirt who kept his gaze fixed on his reins.
‘See there?’ Barkworth rasped, indicating the vehicle. ‘Worth a scrap, wouldn’t you say?’
Stryker eyed the wagon’s contents, and his heartbeat immediately began to accelerate. The bed of the vehicle was crammed full of objects. Stout little barrels, bulging cloth sacks, coils of thin rope, and bushels full to the brim with fist-sized orbs. Ammunition. Powder, shot, grenadoes, match.
As he studied the vehicle with growing excitement, Stryker noticed a man emerge from a pit at the wagon’s rear. It was narrow, its mouth perhaps a yard across, but evidently deep, for the man had required a ladder to climb out. ‘It’s an arms cache,’ he whispered.
Barkworth evidently read the expression on Stryker’s face, for his dirk was suddenly in his little fist and his grin full of murderous relish. ‘Fucking rebels.’
‘If they’re rebels,’ Burton said soberly. ‘And there may be more of the buggers about.’
‘Aye, that there may,’ Barkworth replied, ‘but aren’t we to engage the enemy where possible, sir?’
Stryker glanced at them both, weighing up his options. To fight here would be fraught with risk, for the gunfire would likely carry all the way down to the Parliamentarians in th
e town, but he could not help but think of the rich prize that awaited them. A huge enemy ammunition dump was difficult to ignore. If they were the enemy.
‘How do we get close enough, sir?’ Skellen asked dubiously. ‘Bastards’ll ride off soon as they see us comin’.’
Barkworth’s grin soured, and he grunted reluctant agreement. ‘Ninety-five men ain’t on the quiet side, sir.’
Stryker looked at the Scot. ‘Aye. If we could get this done with fewer. Twenty perhaps.’
Barkworth’s grin returned, his eyes narrowing to gleaming slits. ‘Enough to batter this lot.’
‘Split the force?’ Burton asked.
The question seemed to pour icy water on the fire that was steadily growing in Stryker’s belly, and he sighed deeply, impressed with the younger man’s cool head. He rubbed a hand across the bristles of his chin. ‘You’re right, Andrew, of course. I have been in a black mood of late, and my judgement is not what it ought to be.’ He turned to Barkworth. ‘We should not risk this. There may be a larger troop nearby, and that dozen would send a rider out to fetch them as soon as they heard our approach.’
Barkworth grimaced. ‘But sir—’
‘And hear us they most certainly would,’ Stryker added, cutting Barkworth’s protest dead.
The trees began to whisper then. A crackling in the canopy above their heads, as though the branches were passing ancient secrets to one another. Stryker instinctively looked up, wondering at the noise that was already growing louder, more insistent, a chatter rather than a whisper. In seconds it was louder still, a rushing sound that seemed to engulf the forest.
When the first cold drops finally hit his face, Stryker allowed himself a small smile.
‘Will, Simeon,’ he said as the rain thrashed through the leaves and branches to soak the earth at their feet, ‘bring up the men.’
‘If they’re rebels,’ Burton said again as they watched the company’s tallest and shortest men vanish with equal stealth into the trees.
Stryker patted the lieutenant’s good shoulder. ‘Let’s find out.’
Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles Page 2